The Renaissance Community School for the Arts would be located in space within Gomes Elementary School, located at 286 So. Second St. The school would serve students who live in the Gomes attendance zone. The school would use a“community school”approach to deliver an arts-integrated curriculum.

NEW BEDFORD — Debate has been raging for months over the two innova­tion schools that have been proposed in the city's school district.

Opponents claim the schools — which would be in-district schools that enjoy certain autonomies from the broader district — would create a system of haves and have-nots, with some students enjoying the additional services pro­posed by the schools' design teams and others not.

Proponents argue that the schools would target areas of specific need in the district and would provide much­needed choices for parents and students.

Complete plans for both schools were submitted to the school district in mid-December, and both groups recently completed negotiations with the New Bedford Educators Association on nec­essary changes to the collective bargain­ing agreement.

The next step is for the School Com­mittee to hold a public hearing on the proposals.That date has yet to be sched­uled.

Amid all the rhetoric and the claims of what the schools would or would not do, there's been a shortage of discussion about what the schools would actually look like if they were approved.

The Standard-Times has reviewed both school plans, which were submitted in mid-December, and has interviewed the educators behind the proposals to answer some frequently asked questions about the schools.Today and tomorrow The Standard-Times will present the answers.

RENAISSANCE COMMUNITY SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS

The Renaissance Community School for the Arts would be located in space within Gomes Elementary School, located at 286 So. Second St. The school would serve students who live in the Gomes attendance zone. The school would use a“community school”approach to deliver an arts-integrated curriculum.

WHAT AUTONOMIES DID THE SCHOOL REQUEST?

Under the state's Innovation Schools statute, design teams can request autonomy in any (or all) of the following areas: curriculum, budget, school schedule and calendar, staffing, district policies, and professional development.

The Renaissance School is requesting autonomy in all six areas.

HOW MANY CHILDREN WOULD THE SCHOOL SERVE, AND HOW WOULD THEY BE SELECTED?

In its first year, the Renaissance Community School for the Arts would enroll about 180 students in pre-kindergarten through grade 2. The plan is for the school to grow by one grade each year until it reaches full enrollment in the 2016-2017 school year of about 330 students in pre-kindergarten through grade 5.

The numbers are approximate, however, because Renaissance has committed to ultimately take exactly half of the students in the Gomes Elementary School attendance zone, so if overall enrollment increases or decreases, the enrollment at Renaissance will follow suit, said Jennifer Clune, one of the school's design team members.

Students would be selected through an “opt-out”lottery: every student in the Gomes attendance zone who is registered with the district would be automatically entered into the lottery; once a child is selected for Renaissance, a parent would have the right to “opt out”of enrolling in the innovation school in favor of sending the child to Gomes.

The school is committed to enrolling not just half of the overall student population, but half of key subgroups as well, including English language learners and special-education students, according to Clune.

Finally, the school would accept students who are enrolling mid-year and (or) in later grades, said Clune, just as Gomes does.

HOW MANY TEACHERS AND STAFF WOULD THE SCHOOL HAVE, AND WHERE WOULD THEY COME FROM?

In its first year, the school would employ about 25 people, of whom eight would be classroom teachers, two for each grade.The remaining positions would be filled by a range of specialists — art and music teachers, a speech and language specialist, among others — as well as social worker, family-center coordinator, a principal, a school secretary, and an arts-integration specialist.

According to Clune, most of the jobs at Renaissance are positions that already exist at traditional district schools, with the exception of the arts integration specialist, who would coordinate all of the arts-integrated learning within the school.

Under the autonomies requested in Renaissance's plan, the school is not required to hire staff from within the district. Potential candidates would be interviewed and selected by a committee from the school, which would include parents.

The goal is to hire staff who all believe in the mission and approach of the school, thus creating a strong culture and a sense of continuity from classroom to classroom, according to members of the school's design team.

“There's continuity from classroom to classroom, from grade level to grade level, that these things will be happening,”said Dr. Kathy Miraglia, director of the master of art education program at UMass Dartmouth, and one of the school's proposed partners. “It's not discrete. It doesn't just happen in one classroom and then skips two more. It's the premise of the school.”

WHAT IS ARTS INTEGRATION?

Arts integration is an approach to curriculum and instruction that intertwines a student's study of the arts — visual arts, music, dance, etc. — with the study of other subjects, such as English, math or science.

“It's highly academic,”said Miraglia.“It's not about making little artists out of students, but it's problem-solving through artistic means.”

The school's curriculum will be coordinated so teachers in different content areas are teaching the same concept — observation, data collection and presentation, for example — at the same time.

According to the school's proposal, an arts-integrated approach to teaching that concept might involve students observing the metamorphosis of a butterfly in science classes, drawing sketches of the process and starting to create a book.

In art class, students would continue to develop their sketches, while in English class, they would write essays or poems to accompany the illustrations. A social studies lesson might examine ecology as it relates to butterflies, and a math class could explore symmetry and geometry.

The approach requires a lot of common planning between teachers and alignment of the curriculum across all content areas, according to Miraglia.

WHAT IS A COMMUNITY SCHOOL?

A community school is one that attempts to engage and serve not just its students, but their families as well, through providing rigorous and effective instruction but also by helping meet the physical, mental and emotional needs of students and families, among other things, according to the Renaissance proposal.

“The school is the hub of the community,” said Clune, who said under the community­school model, the school is where families turn to for help on a whole range of issues.

It's a different approach to parental and community engagement that meets parents where they are, according to Maria Rosario, executive director of NorthStar Learning Centers, which would help run the Family and Community Engagement Center at the Renaissance School.

Parental involvement is a key aspect of the model, which the Renaissance School plans to promote by involving families in key decisions — including hiring — and letting their needs drive what services the school provides, according to school officials.

HOW WOULD THE SCHOOL SHARE SPACE WITH GOMES?

The Renaissance school would use about 14 rooms in one“pod,”or section, of Gomes Elementary.The pod has its own cafeteria, as well as a separate entrance and exit to the building. In total, the innovation school would use about a quarter of the building's available space.

According to the proposal, the new school would be entirely contained with that pod, with the exception of its physical education program. For those classes, students would use the Gomes' gymnasium, although only at times when Gomes students and students from other schools were not scheduled to use it.

HOW WILL THE SCHOOL BE FUNDED?

The Renaissance School would receive from the district a set amount of money for every student it enrolls that is equal to the per-pupil funding other district schools receive. For example, if the per-pupil amount is determined to be $10,500, and the Renaissance School enrolls about 180 students in its first year, it would receive about $1.9 million in district funding.

That funding is not over and above the normal district budget, but rather is money that follows the students.

The school could also raise additional money through external fundraising or grant opportunities.

According to the proposal, if the Renaissance School is approved, it will apply for 501(c)(3) nonprofit status and will hold its first fundraiser in June.

Clune said while the school did plan to explore all funding opportunities, she did not anticipate there being a gap between the funding received from the district and the school's costs.

Additionally, the school would be able to access some services through its community partners, such as teaching assistants from UMass Dartmouth's Art Education Department, according to Clune.

“The ability to have student teachers, graduate students (from UMass), and the ability to be a nonprofit and to have fundraisers, I think that's something that's going to be a huge strength of ours,”said Clune.“I think we are going to be able to capitalize on that in a very major way.”

WHAT WOULD A SCHOOL DAY LOOK LIKE FOR STU­DENTS?

The school day for students would start at 8 a.m. and run until 3 p.m., an increase of about 45 minutes over the regular district school day (and an increase of about 2 hours and 15 minutes over the district's Friday schedule, when students are released early to allow for teacher planning time).

Students would have a 45-minute creative arts class (art, dance, music, etc.) at least twice a week as well as a weekly 45-minute physical education class; monthly, students would receive about 720 minutes of arts instruction and 180 minutes of physical education.

In addition to the normal day, the school's goal is also provide after-school activities Monday throughThursday for about two hours.

WHAT WOULD A SCHOOL DAY LOOK LIKE FOR TEACHERS?

Teachers' work days would start at 7:55 a.m. and run until 3 p.m., a work day that is about 45 minutes longer than the regular district day for elementary school teachers. Renaissance teachers will receive a $5,250 stipend to compensate them for the additional time, according to Clune.

Teachers would have common planning time every day, including 45 minutes of school-directed common planning time. In total, teachers would receive about 23 hours of planning time each month, more than double the planning time teachers in regular district elementary schools currently receive, according to the proposal.

Some non-classroom teachers may work a staggered schedule — coming in a little later and then staying a little later — in order to help with the after-school activities, according to Clune.

All teachers at the school would be expected to collaborate and co-teach. All arts integration lessons, by definition, would involve a classroom teacher co-teaching with an arts teacher, but the school's planning expects the co-teaching approach to go beyond that to include many pairings — special education and general education, physical education and general education, and so on.

“It could be any combination of staff,”said Clune, who described the teaching approach as“fluid.”

All students would have their assigned“home”teacher, but could be moved from group to group as necessary, according to Clune.

WHAT TYPE OF PART­NERSHIPS DO THE

SCHOOLS HAVE WITH COM­MUNITY ORGANIZATIONS?

In the Renaissance proposal, the school identified a number of community partners, including the Art Education Department at UMass Dartmouth, NorthStar Learning Centers, the New Bedford Housing Authority, the New Bedford Community Connections Coalition, and the Immigrants'Assistance Center.

The idea behind these partnerships, said Clune, is that the organizations will play an active and ongoing role in the life of the school, not act merely as letters of endorsement in the initial proposal.

“It's like a symbiotic relationship,”she said.“We're doing something and getting something humongous in return. I don't think you can downplay the importance of all those relationships.”

The school's community partners will both provide services to students and families and help connect those families to services that already exist.

For example, the New Bedford Housing Authority will assign a Resident and Opportunity Self-Sufficiency Coordinator to be at the school three mornings or afternoons a week and to work with families living in Housing Authority properties on a range of needs, including social-emotional, academic achievement and adult education, according to the proposal.

In another example, the New Bedford Community Connections Coalition will, among other things, run different education and support workshops for parents — based on needs identified by parents — at the school.